Why Europe cannot afford

THE Ramadan offensive by suicide bombers in Baghdad which killed at least 35 people has been an enormous blow to the coalition leadership in Iraq but, nonetheless, it must have come as no surprise to London or Washington, and the allies of their ragged ‘coalition of the willing’.

They are facing a full-blown guerrilla campaign, which is likely to last months and possibly years – with a regional and maybe global effect.

And this is why the European critics of the war in Iraq cannot afford to stand aside with their hands in their pockets, claiming this is not their fight.

From the first days that American and British forces pushed into Iraq on 20 March this year, it was evident that the ‘tough nuts’ in the Iraqi army and the Baathist militias had been preparing for a sustained guerrilla campaign.

Saddam’s generals knew that Iraq’s armed forces would be outgunned and outflanked by a swift air-land manoeuvre offensive by the Americans.

So they had to find other tactics and other means for defeating the Anglo-American invaders, and ultimately restore a new version of the Baath despotism to power.

On the way, the Baathist stay-behind guerrilla leadership has had to enlist the assistance of a pretty weird alliance: ‘the foreign elements’, in Bush terminology.

Wahabbite fanatics have been tracked filtering across the desert borders with Saudi Arabia.

There are, too, the friends, affiliates and proxies of al-Qaeda – including the new command group of al-Qaeda under Osama’s son, Saad bin Laden – based in Iran.

This is the al-Qods (Jerusalem) commando group, trained by elements of Hezbollah militias working with extremists of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – and these forces are now operating autonomously, beyond the control of President Hatami and the clerical hierarchy.

In the precision and timing of the bombing attacks in Iraq over the past few months there seems to have been more than a trace of Hezbollah tactical and operational thinking.

However, most of those involved in the attacks are likely to be Iraqi, elements of the army or the Fedayeen militia, and hangers-on from the criminal underclass, boosted by Saddam’s emptying of Iraqi jails on the eve of the war in March.

Within two days of the opening of the Anglo-American ground operation, it was clear the allies were facing a different campaign from that predicted by intelligence, because of these Iraqi and foreign elements.

Plans had to be accordingly adjusted. For example, instead of the previously assessed four days, it took nearly three weeks to secure the port of Basra.

As the American military units approached Baghdad, soldiers of the Republican Guard Divisions abandoned their equipment.

Some went home, while some tried desperate rearguard ambushes.

But others, possibly as many as 20-30,000, went to ground to prepare the guerrilla campaign.

Today they have hundreds of thousands of tonnes of shells, bombs and rockets – ideal for the non-sophisticated but deadly weaponry seen in action these past weeks – remotely triggered bombs, car bombs and home-made rocket and mortar launchers. The deadly suicide bombing attack was pioneered and perfected by commanders of Hezbollah such as Imad Mugnaya, whose concepts and tactics are now being used by the bombers in Baghdad.

He was behind the truck bomb attack which killed 240 US Marines in their base outside Beirut in October 1983.

This was a direct forerunner of the 11 September 2001 attacks – as al-Qaeda picked up the idea of suicide attacks from Hezbollah.

Now the allies of the Baathist stay-behind guerrillas – such as Hezbollah and the al-Qaeda cheerleaders – seem to be working on a campaign to link the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, the civil war in Iraq, and the dreams of global conflagration of al-Qaeda.

If they succeed in making the links, it will mean we will all face a global terrorist offensive.

And that means that Europe, as much as America and Britain, is a likely target for asymmetric, terrorist attacks.

Robert Fox is London Evening Standard defence correspondent, and senior associate fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College, London.